Obama Administration Reveals Deep Divisions on Syria Policy
WASHINGTON, Feb 14 2013 (IPS) – Though President Barack Obama has been reticent to involve his administration too deeply in the Syrian uprising, revelations over the past week have shown near-unanimous agreement among the president’s top national security advisors for greater military intervention.
A New York Times story last week uncovered a strategy by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and CIA Director David Petraeus to directly involve the U.S. in arming and supporting the Syrian rebels, in order to have a more direct influence on the course of events in the war-torn country.
The following week, during congressional testimony on the Benghazi embassy attacks, former Secretary of Defence Leon Panetta and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey both professed similar support for the idea of arming Syrian rebels. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper is also said to have backed the plan.
The revelations paint a very different picture from the official narrative of the Obama administration, which has remained publicly sceptical of the idea of providing weapons to unknown militant groups operating in Syria.
“The U.S. long ago accepted the strategy of supporting insurgents as a way to counter the Assad regime or at least to appear to be doing something about Syria,” Leila Hilal, director of the Middle East Task Force for the New America Foundation, told IPS.
“Even if full-scale military support was not mobilised earlier, steps were taken to allow others to arm rebels. The indirect approach failed to turn the conflict and undermined the revolution.”
Foreign policy analysts have jumped to widely different conclusions about the disparate opinions of the president on one hand, his senior national security staff – the secretary of state, the secretary of defence, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, and director of the CIA – on the other.
Writing for the Council on Foreign Relations, Elliott Abrams refers to the president’s decision as “tragically wrong”, and states that “one cannot escape the conclusion that electoral politics played a role” in ignoring the advice of his national security team.
Joshua Landis, associate professor at the University of Oklahoma and proprietor of the widely-read blog Syria Comment, disagrees.
“Obama doesn’t seem to agree with the prevailing interests in Washington, and the way they want to formulate our Middle East policy,” he told IPS.
Landis claims that instead of being influenced by the cabinet’s push for more involvement, “that’s a driver for him for staying out of Syria, because he knows powerful interests will quickly weigh in if we get involved there. He doesn’t seem to trust our Middle East policy-making apparatus.”
Pressed further on the question, General Dempsey clarified later in the week that he supported arming the Syrian opposition “conceptually”, noting that “there were enormous complexities involved that we still haven’t resolved.”
The interventionists’ plan was further undermined by a study within the CIA itself, where a team of intelligence analysts concluded that the influx of U.S. arms would not “materially” affect the situation on the ground.
Landis also cautioned that “the proposals put in front of (Obama) don’t have a plan about how to get out, or if things don’t go according to plan. They don’t outline in any way how America is going to win, or achieve its goals.”
Little is known about the current state of U.S. involvement in the two-year Syrian uprising, which may have claimed the lives of over 60,000 Syrians. Senior White House officials have repeatedly expressed concern that increasing the arms supply to the Syrian rebels may result in weapons falling into the “wrong hands”, a concern exacerbated by the influx of foreign fighters in Syria.
As Al-Qaeda-affiliated militants have risen in the ranks of the armed Syrian opposition – partially due to better financial backing, equipment, training, and experience in Iraq/Afghanistan – it has become increasingly difficult to disentangle such groups from other opposition elements.
Even the very same cabinet members who have vocally supported arming the Syrian opposition have expressed grave reservations about the increasingly extremist inclinations of the rebels. Hillary Clinton herself has warned that “the opposition is increasingly being represented by Al-Qaeda extremist elements,” a development she considers “deeply distressing”.
“You can always vet, but can you make the people you like win?” asked Landis. “I’m sure we know people we like, but the problem is, can you make them winners?”
Thus far, Washington’s efforts to marginalise militant Al-Qaeda groups have largely backfired. After the U.S. designation of Jubhat Al-Nusra, the largest Al-Qaeda-linked fighting group in Syria, as a foreign terrorist organisation, most of the Syrian opposition leadership jumped to their defence.
Moaz Al-Khatib, the titular head of the Syrian opposition’s main coalition, the National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces, immediately defended Jabhat Al-Nusra’s role in the uprising as “essential for victory”.
Nevertheless, Washington has been covertly supporting rebel groups for well over a year, with “non-lethal aid”, intelligence, and other unknown means.
The recent statements by Clinton and Panetta, therefore, still reveal little about the actual relationship between the White House and the Syrian rebels.
President Obama openly criticises the idea of armed assistance but has been silently supporting the rebels, while his administration’s liberal interventionists who have openly called for a more militant role have also expressed grave reservations about the ideology and direction of the very people they hope to arm.
These varied opinions and perspectives leave the door open for any number of policies toward Syria.”No one has taken any option off the table in any conversation in which I’ve been involved,” said Dempsey.
Nevertheless, Landis thinks a more militaristic approach in Syria is unlikely.
“Clearly…the people Obama has tried to put forward, all of his appointees, are not in favour of a muscle-bound Middle East policy and are not in favour of more military involvement,” he said. “They’re consistent with his overall plan, which is not to get involved with Syria, not to start a war with Iran.”
This article was originally published at IPS News.
Read more by Samer Araabi
- Syrian Opposition Remains Divided on Engagement – July 6th, 2011
Obama Administration Reveals Deep Divisions on Syria Policy - Unofficial Network
February 15th, 2013 at 10:08 pm
[...] View original article. [...]
mojo
February 15th, 2013 at 11:39 pm
There is no "split" on White House or any other terror administrators whom are in business in creating wars.., from Henery Kissinger the administrator of Vietnam war to Nixon to Bill Clinton to George w. Bush to Barack Hussein Obama.., they all are working for the system of what is vulture capitalism.., they all defending the system against any government that is or might become anti imperialism.., and USA is a militarism regime not a democracy..,so the system cooperates with more evil as israeli, Saudis and Qataris to show itself as a lesser evil; therefore, the system every now and then hand picks one if those modernized and fashionable liberals eager to create a war or two with different face then the ones before him.., so there is no "split" nor is going to be or has been.., at any time when it comes to us imperialistic agendas.
Winston Smith
February 16th, 2013 at 4:22 am
I am surprised Antiwar.com should have accepted this contributor or the suggestion Washington is not really involved.
It is clear Obama, given his modus operadi of appearing the big Liberal does not, in any circumstances wish to abandon
"Plausible Deniability"
In other words he wishes to keep this as a Covert Operation using paramilitaries, assets other nations like Saudi as cut-outs etc. etc. as such operations have been done for decades.
But it hasn't worked so now they don't really know what to do.
But then there is the delusion Sunni Wahabist Jihadists can be used andcontrolled and then put back in the box afterwards, and as has been said "our Jihadists" can be safely used.
it is clear from Obama and Clinton's new comments they intend to press ahead withthe Covert Operation and instal a pro-American government through "negotiations" and stolen elections – which is how such Covert Operations are intended to end with the victim state surrendering.
It , as has been said, is "You get the Sharia nand we get the oil" as the deal that has been done.
Richard Steven Hack
February 16th, 2013 at 11:03 am
At some point, assuming Obama does attack Syria earlier, it will be clear that the "real" danger is Islamists taking over the revolution. When that happens, Obama will use THAT as the EXCUSE for attacking Syria! It will be the old Iraq "we need to fight them there so we don't have to fight them here" excuse. In other words, far from being a reason NOT to intervene, it will become the reason TO intervene.
This switch could happen at any time.
Obama is fully on board with attacking Syria. He just wants to do it in a way that doesn't get him blamed for a mess. This is the same attitude as his attitude toward Iran. He WANTS a war with Iran – because his masters have told him to do so – but he doesn't want to be BLAMED for STARTING it. So instead he squeezes Iran hoping that Iran will retaliate in a way that he can use to "justify" the war.
Which is why I expect him to push for a US/NATO naval blockade of Iran oil vessels sometime later this year or early next year, spinning this policy as a mere "extension" of his unilateral sanctions regime rather than the act of war it is.
But the US and NATO and Israel WILL attack Syria sometime this year. They have to, because Israel does not want a war with Iran with Syria's and Hizballah;s in Lebanon missile arsenal intact during that war. It is a strategic necessity to degrade those missile arsenals before attacking Iran, otherwise Israel's electorate and economy may be damaged by missile bombardment, something the Israeli ruling elite does not want because it will threaten their political position in elections.
Mark Thomason
February 16th, 2013 at 11:36 am
In any White House there are two sides and only two sides to every question: the President's side, and the wrong side.
This overstates the idea that there is support for things the President does not support. If so many openly support this, then Obama too is cutting a finer course than this makes out. If he's not, then they are not so openly in support except in the imagination of those who wish it were so.
Ba'thist
February 17th, 2013 at 10:23 am
Be true to both your faith and your names, Barack Hussein. Ask yourself, 'How do most Arab Christians in Syria want to resolve this proxy war?'. The answers are known, but to do it would require courage. You might die by the other hand of the same "corpus" that killed King Feisal in 1977.
Augustbrhm
February 17th, 2013 at 4:54 pm
He may be a war criminal like his precedessors but he is not stupid he loves his country its broke so he has to stay out of the conflict if america is to survive.
Dave
February 17th, 2013 at 9:44 pm
our Middle East policy-making apparatus is being driven by people who could be easily swayed by Israel and its powerful lobbies including AIPAC, most probably because they may have something hidden on their records that they fear Israel knows and may expose them if they don’t obey Israel’s wish to involve US in war with Syria and by extension Iran.
On the other hand, President Obama is a young, straight forward statesman with no blemished on his record, at least nothing that public does not know. Therefore, he is under no obligation or force to order a war that is inimical to US interests.